True Patriot Love - TPL On The Road： Royal Star Foods ft Francis Morrissey

00:00:00.000 Looking for reliable and convenient personal safety products?

00:00:07.000 Bless Lethal has you covered.

00:00:08.500 As Canada's only authorized Burna distributor,

00:00:11.000 we provide a range of products for recreation, protection, and security.

00:00:14.500 Explore our Burna launcher lineup, including the LE, SD, TCR, and Mission 4,

00:00:19.500 designed for different levels of performance and protection needs.

00:00:22.000 We also offer the Banshee Personal Safety Alarm,

00:00:24.500 designed to protect children, women, and vulnerable individuals,

00:00:27.500 because your safety is our top priority.

00:00:29.500 Shop now at lesslethal.ca.

00:00:34.280 Well, the East Coast tour continues.

00:00:37.220 We're actually in PEI and we're in Tignish still.

00:00:41.060 And we're lucky enough today to have Francis Morrissey with us from Royal Star Fisheries.

00:00:47.720 Foods.

00:00:48.520 Foods.

00:00:49.080 Sorry about that.

00:00:50.420 Royal Star Foods.

00:00:51.560 And you know what?

00:00:53.100 I was coming in and I got to tell you, very impressive.

00:00:56.740 Taking a look at the pictures.

00:00:58.920 So this is just the processing plant, right?

00:01:01.640 As you were describing?

00:01:02.840 Yes.

00:01:03.100 Yeah.

00:01:04.080 And all the other, the boats and everything, they're all, help me out to understand where they are for the lobster catch.

00:01:12.240 Well, we have, we buy lobsters from two fishing zones.

00:01:16.620 Right.

00:01:17.080 Fishing zone 24, which is April, May, June fishery.

00:01:21.900 Right.

00:01:22.180 And then we have boats that fish in Area 25. That starts on August the 10th.

00:01:28.180 Okay.

00:01:29.180 And that goes till October the 10th.

00:01:31.180 Right.

00:01:32.180 Then we do buy in other provinces and in Southwest Nova in the winter fishery.

00:01:37.180 So, and then they come here?

00:01:39.180 Yep.

00:01:40.180 And they get processed?

00:01:41.180 Either processed or live.

00:01:42.180 Okay. And then shipped out from here?

00:01:45.180 From here all over the world. 0.84

00:01:47.180 Right. How does it get shipped out of here on boats? 0.94

00:01:51.180 No, no. If it's live, it goes in refrigerated trucking to the airports in Halifax, Moncton,

00:02:02.140 Toronto, Montreal, or down into New York or Boston. If it's frozen, 99% of the frozen

00:02:10.620 stuff goes to Halifax and sea containers, frozen sea containers. We don't ship live

00:02:17.100 lobsters in the in sea containers they are all flown on flights with air freight wow how much

00:02:23.340 are we talking friends a lot a lot like millions of pounds wow well you can tell the size of the

00:02:29.420 plant right yeah the size of the plant just unbelievable so help me out here because you

00:02:39.340 know how did you how did you get into this yeah you grew up here i grew up here i started fishing

00:02:45.420 in 1982 and I was after so many years I went on the board of directors of the company and

00:02:56.620 I was on the board of directors for 20 some years and then they asked me, they had some

00:03:08.140 changes in management, they asked me would I look after it for a bit because I had a

00:03:14.580 lot of experience from being on the board and stuff and I said I'd give it a try for six months

00:03:20.820 and six months has become 16 years. Oh good for you wow and this is a co-op right? It's a cooperative

00:03:28.340 it's owned 100% by the fishers and the way it's set up each fisher has one share in the company

00:03:35.380 and to have a share you have to have a license to fish some species of seafood to be a member

00:03:45.640 of the guac. Okay. And the members are accepted under the terms the first year you're on probation

00:03:52.400 so if you're experienced as a new fisher the first year you like it and the company has no

00:04:02.680 problem is nothing then there you're if you want to join and become a full member then they will

00:04:08.600 the board of directors decides how many they take each year oh okay so how did it get set up so the

00:04:14.840 corp just it was set up but we're 101 years old oh wow this year okay it was set up 101 years ago

00:04:22.600 by a bunch of local fishers and a local lawyer and his name was Chester McCarty and they formed a

00:04:31.080 group that was going to sell their lobsters to the co-op and to process them and stuff like that.

00:04:37.720 They didn't have an easy starting. The reading of it is very interesting of how the struggles

00:04:48.360 that they went through when they formed the company. Oh I'm sure. But then it continued to

00:04:54.040 operate and there was lots of years it had rough rough times and good times but it survived 101

00:05:00.920 years yeah what a business model and like one time it was a major major employer in the community

00:05:08.360 because every family had between nine and 16 kids today it's still a major employer but a lot of the

00:05:17.960 workforce now is has came here from other countries mostly the philippines but a lot of our workers

00:05:25.800 have became Canadian citizens holding Canadian passports that have come here and some of them

00:05:31.880 are here now for I think 14 years. And a huge amount of our workforce are permanent residents

00:05:42.280 on the way to becoming Canadian citizens. The way I look, some people will call them temporary

00:05:48.520 foreign workers, I don't. I think it's degrading to call a person a temporary foreign worker,

00:05:53.480 they're employees of your company. We're very lucky that we have a large amount of them that 0.99

00:05:59.480 have become Canadian citizens and without them we wouldn't be operating because our workforce

00:06:06.520 in this area has dwindled substantially because basically the easiest thing that we could do when

00:06:14.280 I grew up as a child was have a ball game because within one mile of where I grew up you had no

00:06:21.480 problem to get 82 people basically it's around the same age to play common ball

00:06:26.160 out in the pasture field right right today you couldn't get two because the

00:06:30.960 families have gone down to one and two children they're no more 16 right so

00:06:36.480 that's the difference you know it's interesting we just did a show on birth

00:06:41.100 rates and we're trying to figure out on the show it's a three-part series which

00:06:46.140 is very interesting just trying to figure out why there's no more why

00:06:49.960 people aren't having kids anymore you know even in my generation i just turned 60 very frankly you

00:06:56.200 know it was we all had three and four kids so what happened you know and we weren't having nine but

00:07:00.840 we're still having three and four kids now we're like you mentioned we're down to one we're actually

00:07:06.040 what in the lowest quartile uh in the world worth birth rates well in my family there was

00:07:13.800 nine of us living and there was a couple others that passed that birth but it was common it was

00:07:22.440 common for every household to have nine 12 15. i know house households you know in the community

00:07:32.200 here back then they had 19 kids wow same mother same father yeah you know yeah there was the

00:07:40.040 schools were full but like our population had dwindled badly and it's very hard in this community

00:07:48.280 to hire male employees due to the fact that every fishing boat has tree workers aboard the fishing

00:07:58.120 vessel so we have so many fishing vessels in this local area that it just takes up all the labor

00:08:08.040 force right okay because they're out on the boat well they're out on the fishing boats right right

00:08:12.920 so then you can't hire the things so that's why we had to start bringing workers in but luckily

00:08:18.440 when we started bringing people here half of the town the lights were out because there was nobody

00:08:24.760 living in the houses because the older people had passed on and nobody the younger people have moved

00:08:29.160 on the few but uh right today there's no vacant houses they're all ding they've purchased houses 0.82

00:08:35.960 and everything else yeah and what makes it bad is you get this uh this uh crap that goes on on

00:08:45.240 social media i don't know how far i'm i'm allowed to go on this podcast or what i'm allowed to talk

00:08:50.920 about but oh yeah it's a podcast i don't know if you're going to get in trouble because i'm not

00:08:55.160 worried about getting in trouble no no like people got the the perception out there that these people

00:09:01.960 that come here to work that the government is paying their wages not true the government is

00:09:07.240 paying for their houses not true and the government is paying for everything it's not true they pay

00:09:13.640 they when the cub it comes to bring an employee here from another country it causes this company

00:09:20.440 about fifty six hundred dollars we got to buy an lmia from the government yeah we have to pay for

00:09:28.520 a bunch of other paperwork and polos then we have to fly the employee here and pay all that you know

00:09:36.040 do we pay for their housing no and when they but thing but like that's the the problem the the

00:09:44.280 only difference i see between them and myself my ancestors came here 300 years ago they're just

00:09:50.440 getting here. Yeah, exactly. Well, same, right? We came in, we all came, our answer.

True Patriot Love - July 19, 2026

TPL On The Road： Royal Star Foods ft Francis Morrissey

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript